“The white man's happiness cannot be purchased by the black man's misery.”

“To the black man, the white man looks and smells like a corpse. To the white man, the black man has the color and odor of shit. Their mutual hatred is based on a reciprocal recognition: the white man hates the black man for exposing that masked and hidden part of himself. The black man hates the white man's need to pull himself up from the earth. The black man sees in the white man's need the blind arrogance of one who thinks himself immortal. But he who brings civilization cannot help but feel immortal. This is why he smells like a corpse: he is constituted by the return of the repressed "remnant of earth," which clings to him as much as to any man.”

“Money will not purchase happiness for the man who has no concept of what he wants.”

“We have developed communications systems to permit man on earth to talk with man on the moon. Yet mother often cannot talk with daughter, father to son, black to white, labour with management or democracy with communism”

“...my point is that the only authentic identity for the African is the tribe...I am Nigerian because a white man created Nigeria and gave me that identity. I am black because the white man constructed black to be as different as possible from his white. But I was Igbo before the white man came.”

“The power of the white world is threatened whenever a black man refuses to accept the white world's definitions.”